In Defense Of The Golden Globes’ Dumbest Award

It’s strange that the Golden Globes‘ newest category already feels out of date. In 2023, the besieged awards body created the Golden Globe Award for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, officially to celebrate “the year’s most acclaimed, highest-earning and/or most viewed films that have garnered extensive global audience support and attained cinematic excellence.“

Whatever its official criteria, its intent was obvious. Years of Marvel movie dominance had built up pressure around their usual lack of awards recognition, usually voiced as Hollywood awarding movies nobody actually saw, and this was the Globes’ way of addressing it. The Academy themselves tried it, but the suggested Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film category was met with so much backlash that it was shelved before its debut. The Golden Globes don’t provoke that kind of defensiveness.

Ironic that, in just its third year ever, there are no Marvel movies among the 2026 nominees for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. But their impact on awards season remains, and I most often see it discussed as a farce. It’s either framed as a cynical way of making sure the year’s biggest movies make it onto the telecast, or a vaguely disrespectful consolation prize, where films that might’ve hoped to break into awards races find themselves relegated.

But it could, and should, be more.

The Golden Globes Have A Chance To Award The Movies That Mattered

In general, I stand with the majority in thinking an award for “box office achievement” is silly. Awards shows are about recognizing the quality work of filmmakers that might otherwise go unrecognized; the year’s highest-grossing movies are rewarded for their success with cold, hard cash. If anyone’s whining about their hit blockbuster not being nominated for Oscars, they should be asking themselves whether their movie was actually good enough.

But this Globes category should be more than pull directly from the box office top 10, and this year it has:

If this award was purely financial, it’d be worth mocking the Golden Globes (as many already have) for nominating a Netflix film that spent just two weekends in some theaters and a movie with a to-date worldwide gross of $0. But they’re clearly trying to do something different here; these are all movies that either took big, blockbuster swings or connected with audiences in a big way. It’s a nice idea that isn’t quite properly calibrated yet.

Rather than awarding movies for the size of their returns or their on-screen ambition, this category should be recognizing the movies that defined the year. Which films became cultural moments? Which films inspired people to engage with them and make them their own? Which films made cinema bigger?

In this definition, Sinners, Weapons, and KPop Demon Hunters are all worthy nominees this year. Not only are they all great films and deserving of recognition in other categories, but they rose above the noise to become some of 2025’s signature pieces of pop culture. At a time when “the movies” have to fight with all manner of other media for attention, it feels right to celebrate the ones that break through. And that can be made relative, too – a small movie leaving a much bigger footprint is still impressive, regardless of whether it compares to the impact of a tentpole.

This Golden Globes category isn’t quite there yet, but it easily could be. And if this truly becomes its purpose, I will gladly rally behind it.